This week's New Yorker features
the story
of one Georgia middle school's involvement in a notorious
cheating scandal offers a compelling reason for why some teachers
cheat: The consequences schools face when they don't meet
standards are so severe that cheating is regarded as a necessary
evil.

Today, many teachers, students,
and parents criticize the controversial Common Core State Standards,enacted in 2009, which set math
and language arts guidelines for K-12 students in most U.S.
states. Some parents and teachers
have attacked the standards for creating a
one-size-fits-all education model that doesn't always benefit
students. Rigorous testing is a key component of Common
Core.

Even before the Common Core, students, teachers, and
administrators faced grueling pressure to meet the requirements
of the
No Child Left Behind Act. That law required states to
implement challenging reading and math standards and annual
standardized testing for third grade through eighth grade. It
emphasized greater achievement for poor and minority students and
required states to show adequate yearly progress through test
scores, in order to reach 100% proficiency in reading and math by
2014.

In Atlanta, Georgia in 2006, dozens of desperate teachers at
Parks Middle School allegedly took extreme measures to meet those
standards, as detailed in Rachel Aviv's eye-opening New Yorker
article.

Under No Child Left Behind, schools that weren't progressing fast
enough "received a series of escalating sanctions, including
state monitoring, a revised curriculum, replacement of staff, and
restructuring or closure of the school," according to The New
Yorker.

The cheating at Parks Middle School allegedly revolved around
math teacher Damany Lewis and the school's principal Christopher
Waller. They and other educators faced pressure from the
district's superintendent to meet strict targets based on test
scores, according to Aviv's article. Some teachers who didn't
meet targets were told they would face a Performance Development Plan,
regarded as a precursor to losing their job.

In 2006, Waller decided to
alter students' test scores, seeing it as a necessary evil to
prevent the penalties of not making arbitrary
targets.

Lewis chose to help, because he
wanted to avoid the severe consequences of not meeting targets
based on test scores "Waller reminded him that Parks was a
'sanctuary,' a 'safe haven' for the community. If the school
didn't meet its targets, Waller explained, the students would be
separated and sent to different schools, outside Pittsburgh.
Lewis said he felt that 'it was my sole obligation to never let
that happen,'" Aviv wrote.

Aviv summed up the teachers' compelling reason for cheating in
this passage of her article in The New Yorker:

Unlike recent cheating scandals
at Harvard and
at Stuyvesant High School, where privileged students were
concerned with their own advancement, those who cheated at Parks
were never convinced of the importance of the tests; they viewed
the cheating as a door they had to pass through in order to focus
on issues that seemed more relevant to their students' lives.

In 2010, agents with the
Georgia Bureau of Investigation uncovered cheating at Parks Middle School
and 43 other Atlanta schools. Click
here to read the full article in The New Yorker.